Metalworking dies, such as stamping, punching, piercing, blanking and shearing dies for sheet metal forming processes, commonly move toward and away from each other during the associated process. For many applications, upper and lower die halves or other tooling are respectively mounted on an upper plate and a lower plate of a die set having spools, rods, or the like aligning and guiding reciprocal movement of the superimposed plates and confronting die halves or other tooling toward and away from each other.